Quote of the Day #2

With the recent murder at a school in Connecticut, I felt that the following passage from Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI would be very pertinent. This passage is set within the context of the Holy Father's brilliant and penetrating analysis of the hidden meaning of the Beatitudes and of the interconnections between them, which is one of the great highlights of the book. Here the Pope is discussing the second Beatitude, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Mt. 5:4):

The sufferer is not truly comforted, his tears are not completely wiped away, until he and the powerless of this world are no longer threatened by murderous violence; comfort is not brought to completion until even past sufferings never previously understood are lifted up into the light of God and given the meaning of reconciliation by his goodness; true comfort only appears when the "last enemy," death (cf. 1 Cor. 15:26), and all its accomplices have been stripped of their power. Christ's words about comforting thus help us to understand what he means by "Kingdom of God" (of the heavens), while "Kingdom of God" gives us in turn an idea of what consolation the Lord holds in store for all those who mourn and suffer in this world.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Doubleday, 2007), p. 88